1. Field of the Technology
This technology pertains generally to smart wearable devices and sensor networks and more particularly to a system of networked wearable sensor and processing devices with dynamic power consumption and network load optimization.
2. Discussion
Current wearable devices are typically autonomous and the device architecture is not capable of communicating with other wearable devices. For example, sensor data from a sensor wristband worn by a wearer would not take into consideration other wearable devices such as smart-glasses that may be coincidentally present on or around the same body of a user. Emerging markets for wearable devices means that most wearers will not be limited to the use of only a single device at a given time. Rather, with the availability of reasonably priced wearable devices, many users will be able to wear a number of wearable devices simultaneously.
However, the isolated sensing of each wearable sensor device results in the very inefficient management of the total “sensing” and “computing” pool of resources of the set of multiple wearable devices. There is no control over the redundant sensors that could remain idle during this period. For example, duplicated sensing of the same body parameter (e.g. heart-rate or skin temperature) may be occurring from multiple wearable devices at the same time, whereas a single reading from any one of them would provide enough sensor data.
Accordingly, the lack of control and redundancy creates sub-optimal power consumption and reduces the overall battery life of all of the wearable devices (as they could be “sleeping” or remaining idle instead of capturing data needlessly), as well as network load (as those same wearable devices may be uploading redundant sensed data to multiple remote/Cloud-based locations which have no possible knowledge of those multiple occurrences).
Increasing the battery life of wearable devices is a concern to users of such devices. Recharging requirements of wearable sensors in a watch, glasses or clothing item influences the overall usefulness of the wearable device. Reducing the number of recharge cycles in a given time period will also make the wearable devices more “wearer-friendly.”
The transfer load of sensor data from isolated wearable sensor devices is also a concern with the growing number of wearable devices that are available. This is of particular interest to mobile network operators or other providers of the network capacity for “Machine-to-Machine” communications between wearable devices and remote/Cloud systems. Optimization of the amount of data would reduce the transfer load (and potential bandwidth crunch) given the fact that potentially thousands/millions of wearers may be uploading data concurrently.
Nevertheless, in some settings the acquisition of redundant sensor data is useful. For example, a body parameter may benefit from the combination of multiple readings (e.g. temperature at different locations throughout the body), which would be impossible to achieve right now despite the potential existence of multiple readings from the several wearable devices. While a casual jogger may be satisfied with a single tracker measuring the pace/heart-rate, a semi-pro or professional runner may want more precise measurements through the use of multiple devices.
There is a need for devices and methods for controlling the production and processing of sensor data and for the optimization of power consumption in each of the multiple wearable sensors worn by a user.